Friday Fictioneers – Beam me up

~ neilmacdon
sp-overgrown-summer-house
PHOTO PROMPT © Sarah Potter

Almost nothing survives of the Old People. The radioactive rubble, of course, will endure for tens of thousands of years. And they left twisted metal and crumbling concrete.  But of the people themselves, nothing. Save this one fragment of a letter, written in Anglish by a young man to his lover in Birmingham. He plans to visit her.

It is from this letter that we learn they had mastered matter transference. Perhaps they are not gone. Maybe they beamed to new homes in the stars. We only know this unnamed writer was coming to her in his “beamer”.

 

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.  For readers whose first language isn’t English, it may (or may not) help you to know that beamer is slang for BMW, or more generically a cool car.

Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on character and action.

 

52 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – Beam me up”

  7. wonderful possibilities with this tale. I’ve often considered our world through the eyes of a future archaeologist or anthropologist… 🙂 ❤

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  11. Great play on words with the beamer.
    I am also a BMW owner, although ours is a bit like the sideboard in the photo. It’s a 1980 model out of rego and we should’ve sold it a year ago. Thing move very slowly around here.
    xx Rowena

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  14. Made me smile, Neil, even though there are seriously sad overtones. Where are we all? But there’s a bit of me that likes the thought the future ones believe we’ve moved on to a better place. Nicer than the reality, eh?
    Great tale

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  18. Clever bit of wordplay at the end though a much more somber mood in the beginning. Reminded me a bit of those lines from Tithonus “woods decay and fall”. Nice one.

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  20. At the beginning I was wondering if this was going to be a story on how our generation has destroyed the planet and my mind was imagining so many bleak images; thankfully your ending made me laugh out loud…love the play on words.

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  28. I speak ‘Anglish’ so know what a ‘beamer’ is. Sadly, someone used the dreaded bomb it seems. I wonder how many of the coastlines are under water in that time. So much for the worry of overpopulation. Good writing as always, Neil. 🙂 — Suzanne

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